


I love you, no expense spared

by myoue



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Dating, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Sugar Daddy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9292670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myoue/pseuds/myoue
Summary: Victor is used to paying for dates, accidentally spilling things on people, and spoiling Katsuki Yuri like no tomorrow.





	

**Author's Note:**

> based off a lovely anon prompt to me with [sugar daddy] victor buying things for grad student yuri, which got a little out of hand... also first time writing au for them but still contains an embarrassing number of references to canon things bc i have a problem

Before now, chatting up others at parties used to be a boring and rather tediously expected thing for Victor Nikiforov to do. It’s not that he hated talking and going to parties, at least not in the beginning, but it had become something so monotonous. Or maybe it’s the people that were monotonous. There didn’t really seem to be a difference in Victor’s mind.

“Trust me, I wouldn’t be here either if I had a choice,” Katsuki Yuri tells him one New Year’s Eve dorm party, hanging off his arm at a table surrounded by punch bowls, likely spiked, and cheap finger food—what literally looked like food made out of fingers to Victor. Yuri has an empty glass, or nearly empty, hanging precariously from his fingertips. “I live here,” he boasts.

“Ah.”

Victor doesn’t live here. He’d made a choice to come here. One that he’d been regretting more and more as the night went on, when midnight came and went, and Victor had all but had his fair share of free drinks that he could get his hands on.

“Hey, what’s your name again?”

“Victor,” Victor says, staring down at a scruff of messy black hair wobbling about against him.

“Victor, can you get me another champagne? I don’t think I can get up.”

Such a proposition makes Victor laugh more than anything. “Maybe that means I shouldn’t be getting you another champagne.” He carefully swindles the glass from Yuri’s fingers, placing it on the table where he nearly makes a half dozen or so other empty glasses fall, and Victor realizes those are probably all Yuri’s as well.

Yuri doesn’t really protest or put up much of a fight, but he does swivel around in his seat in order to stare up at Victor with wide, rather sober-looking eyes, ones that try their best to convince Victor of his levelheadedness.

And then he pouts.

With a hand firmly on Victor’s thigh and face far too, incredibly too, close—It’s a trick, Victor tells himself repeatedly. It’s a dirty trick.

“ _Please_ …” Yuri slurs against his ear, plays with his emotions and his weak will. “I’ll be right here, all night long.”

But it’s not the usual obligation that makes Victor get up to get that champagne for a boy that’s clearly had way too much already.

-

Victor hadn’t been to a single dorm party since then. Maybe it was the constant excitement that finally wore down on him. And while they were fun at first, they might have started to feel like more of a chore than anything else, even and especially when he was thrust with the duty of taking care of someone the whole time, too. It was quite the difficult task. Though, that might have been the only fun part, really.

“Oh,” Yuri says, leaning over the glass of a campus sandwich shop they’re at. “I don’t remember.”

“What! You don’t remember at all!?” Victor protests, draping himself against Yuri’s shoulder like it’s a punishment for betraying him like this. “How could you get that drunk off champagne that you don’t remember anything at all?”

Yuri shrugs, pushing Victor up and down with the movement. “How much champagne did I drink?” He points out a turkey club sandwich to the cashier.

“Uhh.” Victor scratches at his head. Well, counting the drinks on the table, and the ones Victor went up and got willingly for him, not including the ones Yuri had surely drunk before Victor had sat down next to him, and not including the ones that Yuri hadn’t even finished but went up to get his glass topped up anyway… “I don’t know,” Victor admits.

Yuri grimaces at him. “You’re really the worst chaperone ever.”

“Chaperone! That was the first time we met!”

“Oh.”

“You don’t even remember that, either…”

Well, at this point it almost feels like they’ve known each other forever, even to Victor, so he can’t exactly blame Yuri for not remembering how they first met. It’s been a while.

“By the way, I’m broke today,” Yuri says when the cashier holds his hand out for sandwich money. Yuri puts his hands together in front of Victor, smiling sheepishly. “Please?”

“You came to buy lunch and you didn’t even bring money?” Victor says incredulously.

“I remembered just now I forgot my wallet at home,” Yuri says, sounding definitely not like something he remembered just now. “Besides, they’re pretty lenient around here. Maybe there are a lot of broke uni students or something. Usually they accept it if I just give them my watch or something as collateral.”

“What! Seriously?”

The cashier in front of them nods like this is all true information.

“Yeah, see?” Yuri reveals his watch from beneath his sleeve and brings it up for Victor to see. Somehow it looks like it’s indeed been passed over a counter numerous times.

He squints. “What…” Victor is so confused. But Yuri is already in the process of stripping the watch from his wrist when Victor grabs him. “Wait, okay, I’ll pay for your sandwich. It’s only like five bucks? Why are you giving away your watch so easily?”

“It only cost me like five bucks, anyway,” Yuri tells him obviously like he should’ve known this.

Victor is still so confused. He’s never in his life seen a watch that nice that’s only cost five dollars. Well, it’s not  _that_ nice a watch but it’s definitely not crap. And definitely not worth handing over for a damn sandwich.

Victor reaches into his pocket for a five, wondering what kind of shady bartering deals go on in Yuri’s dormitory, and maybe that there’s a reason why Yuri never seems to have cash on him. Like ever. Victor has never lived on campus himself, doesn’t have a clue if this is what all integrated university kids are like, or if this is just Yuri.

“Thanks!”

Victor may have been annoyed if Yuri didn’t look so heartbreakingly cute munching away on his 6-inch turkey club as they leave the shop.

“Yuri,” Victor says to him, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket, clutching at his cell phone. “If you ever can’t pay for something, just call me. Don’t start handing over valuables, okay?”

He’s being serious but Yuri doesn’t seem to take his proposition with any ounce of seriousness at all. He continues eating, humming, like Victor’d just told him the weather was very nice today.

“It’s not a valuable—it’s only worth five bucks,” Yuri has to say to him again.

-

It had always annoyed Victor when people would use their phones in front of him, if he were on a date or something, and they’d be texting someone else. Or even if they talked excessively about someone, like, say, gossiping about the sexual exploits of other people. It had really annoyed the shit out of him. He’d gotten used to staring out expensive restaurant windows and wondering if he were the most boring person on Earth. It wouldn’t be often that someone would tell him right to his face that he seemed nice on the outside but actually had a rather sour personality when getting to know him, but when they did Victor wasn’t much inclined to disagree.

If Victor didn’t know any better, he would have thought Yuri had no other friends.

He doesn’t know why he’s thinking about this as Yuri works away on his laptop while they’re at the library, and not once does Yuri’s phone ever blink to indicate a message or notification or anything. Or if it does, it does it rarely. And even then, Victor’s almost sure it’s because of some game app.

 “What are your other friends like?” Victor asks out of the blue, hoping he’s not interrupting any important work Yuri’s doing, just because he’s curious and doesn’t seem to have any boundaries about these kinds of things.

Yuri doesn’t get mad or upset or anything, though. Or if he does he doesn’t show it. “Why do you ask?” he merely says back, not taking his eyes off the computer.

Victor shrugs. “Dunno.” Okay, so maybe all Victor’s been doing for the last hour is trolling social media, and he’s been maybe wondering if perhaps Yuri has an internet presence of some sort. Don’t get him wrong—Victor has looked. He’s tried finding Yuri Katsuki on various different platforms to no avail. At this point it would probably be wise to close a few tabs with Yuri’s name.

“I have a roommate…” Yuri says slowly, as if Victor doesn’t already know this. “You’d probably like him.”

Maybe. But Yuri doesn’t say much else about any of his other friends, and it only contributes to Victor’s suspicions that it really is only game apps flashing on Yuri’s notifications.

“Do you have a lover?” Victor asks with a bit of leer in his voice, leaning his head down against the desk, looking up at Yuri like he’ll be able to tell better from this angle.

The question gets Yuri instantly frazzled though, and it piques Victor’s interest more than it should.

“What! Uh… no.”

“Hm,” Victor hums contemplatively. “Ex-lovers?” he prompts, leaning in further across his side of the table.

Yuri is already ten shades of on fire when his shoulders stiffen even higher. “I’d really rather not talk about it,” he answers vaguely but not at all like there isn’t some story behind this that Victor finds himself wanting to hear more about.

“Oh, too bad.”

Yuri actually looks at him now. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Victor shrugs, clicks his tongue. “I mean absolutely nothing by it.”

He doesn’t know why he’d even asked in the first place. He’s not that curious. He’s not being judgemental. He’s most certainly not jealous. But there’s something about Yuri that makes Victor crave to know more, even if he has to ask about it and get some answer that really answers nothing at all.

Like for example, Yuri’s not the most social person—Victor’s already figured that much out, at least. But he’s not  _un_ sociable, either. Though since when did a person have to be only one or the other?

“I’ll get us some coffee,” Victor suddenly says, standing up, shutting the lid of his MacBook. “What do you want?”

“Black,” Yuri responds without missing a beat.

So he goes to get them coffee because he feels like Yuri deserves a drink as a little apology for his prying.

The cafeteria isn’t far, anyway. Victor comes back with two coffees and a muffin for himself that he’s already peeling the paper off of when he notices Yuri taking his attention from his computer to eye the sweet scent from across the table.

“If you wanted food you should’ve told me,” Victor mentions, taking a bite.

“How much was the coffee?” Yuri asks him instead, still eyeing the muffin though. “I have change.” He starts reaching for his bag to show his sincerity.

“It’s fine, I got it,” Victor tells him.

Which makes Yuri pause. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” It’s nothing, Victor wants to say but holds his tongue.

It doesn’t look like Yuri’s satisfied, though, when his hands remain on the zipper of his bag. Maybe he’s finally starting to feel bad for all the money he’s sponged off Victor. Neither of them are stupid. The money adds up after a while. “Do you do this with all your friends?” Yuri asks him innocuously, taking a sip from his coffee.

“Not really.”

“What does _not really_ mean?”

Not really, just you, Victor thinks. Maybe Yuri’s also noticed that Victor’s phone lights up with notifications about as much as his does.

Regardless, it’s not about how many friends Victor has or if he does this with any of them. There’s just this pull that makes him want to buy things for Yuri. Specifically, Yuri. That’s all. Considering he, at one point, was going to trade a watch for food like this was the middle ages, the knowledge that Yuri will be okay at least for the next few hours gives Victor peace of mind. Good food and a warm drink also tend to make Yuri talk more.

“If I’m on a date or something, I’ll pay for dinner,” Victor mentions casually, wiping crumbs off the table when they fall from his muffin. “Unless they really want to split the bill, but that doesn’t happen often. Not many will turn up a free dinner.” He laughs.

“You go on dates often?” Yuri says.

“Mmm… not really.”

“They never work out?”

Victor has to think about it a little bit. “Yeah, I guess they never do.”

“Even with someone as cool and handsome as you?”

“Oh? I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It _was_ a compliment.”

“Then I’ll take it as one.”

Yuri uses putting his bag back down on the floor as an excuse not to look at Victor, and even when he’s done doing that he picks up his coffee cup to hide his expression behind. “Is this a date?”

Victor has to pause in his muffin-eating.

“…A date? Oh, like a study date?” Victor proposes, touching a finger to his lips. “A study date isn’t really a date, is it?” he wonders.

By the look on Yuri’s face, at least from what Victor can see, that’s not at all what Yuri thinks, though it flashes for only a second. Replacing it is something of a smile in understanding, a little like that’s the kind of answer he was expecting out of Victor, and it makes Victor want to say he’s just joking even though he doesn’t have an explanation to back it up.

“Oh, okay.” The coffee is put back on the table.

Victor really had never thought about it that much, though.

He’s already paid for tons of Yuri’s food up until now regardless of time or place or if there’s some sort of obligation for him to pay or not. And even though they have their laptops and their coffee and their one muffin out right now, Victor hasn’t spent even a second of their time together actually studying. Just reaping the rewards of small talk and food.

He doesn’t know exactly if a date always requires taking place in a restaurant and ending with him taking the bill. Yuri looked at him like he was an idiot for not getting the word _date_ out of _study date_ , though.

He can’t see Yuri’s screen from the other side of the table, but Victor has the urge to know if Yuri’s actually working on anything school-related on his computer, as if this knowledge would somehow solve what Victor’s put himself with.

Like if knowing Yuri has ten tabs open with Victor Nikiforov’s name on all of them would solve anything at all. Just the thought itself has Victor warming all the way to his fingertips.

“I’d actually gotten two muffins,” he brings up as a well-timed distraction, producing a wrapped cafeteria chocolate chip muffin from the pocket of his jacket and holding it out to Yuri. He grins when, as usual, Yuri is quick to accept it.

“I knew it,” Yuri says, just as quick to scarf it down.

-

Yuri is a grad student. He’s hardworking, even on Fridays.

And sometimes, he accepts Victor into his living space even though he has absolutely nothing in his personal fridge or laying around in his room or the shared kitchen. It’s rather a disgrace. It makes Victor wonder how the hell this boy is living day to day, if he was even planning on feeding Victor anything after letting him come over. But more than anything it sets off Victor’s worrying for Yuri’s health—at risk of seeming like Yuri’s actual mother. He can pursue higher education but he can’t remember to eat three times a day? Does he have parents, or do they just let him do whatever he wants, too?

“You have a lot of posters,” Victor comments, walking around Yuri’s half of the room like he’s inspecting a high-end art museum. “Of men,” he tacks on notably.

“Yeah? What of it?”

“Who is he?”

“A famous figure skater. You wouldn’t know him,” Yuri answers, apparently not keen on telling Victor much about the scantily clad man dancing across his otherwise barren dorm room walls. Is it all the same man? Victor can’t tell. This is only his first time here, though he might be able to tell after a few more visits, a few more inquiries into the exact nature of the man that causes Yuri to be so infatuated. The posters are quite handsome, though.

 _He looks like me_ , Victor thinks obnoxiously.

“You have good taste.”

“Ah?”

“In men,” Victor clarifies tactfully.

Yuri glances up and down at Victor from where’s seated at his desk, and Victor only gazes back innocently at him to the point that even he’s not sure if he’d meant what he meant.

But Yuri merely turns his attention back to his books, keen on being hardworking even though it’s a Friday and Victor had thought they might do something fun. “You’re damn right I do,” Yuri mumbles.

-

The restaurant they’re at is mediocre, at least to Victor’s standards. But it’s all he could do when he’d gotten sick of eating the no name brand cereal in Yuri’s pantry. The plan for the night was restaurant first, grocery shopping at a 24-hour mart later.

 “What you’re wearing is _fine_ ,” Victor reassures him, pushing the menu forward until he’s poking Yuri’s arm with it. “Jeans are fine. You look cute, like college chic! And nobody’s looking, anyway.”

“They are _looking_ ,” Yuri insists, glaring at Victor up and down like the staring is somehow his fault. And then Yuri lowers his voice even further to hiss, “I thought we were going to get fast food or something. I’m wearing a shirt that I usually go to bed in! And I didn’t wash my hair! Oh god, they all think I don’t belong here.”

“I doubt it. This is a family restaurant.”

“But at the very least you have to look _presentable_ when you’re out in public!” Yuri retorts, his hand holding the side of his head like he’s trying to block people from looking at him. “I barely look decent.”

Victor scrunches his face, trying to come up with a solution. “Maybe put your coat back on, then.”

“I’ll die of heatstroke.”

“Take your shirt off and then put your coat on.”

“…I’m not doing that.”

Yuri’s wearing a plain navy blue long-sleeve. What’s there to worry about? And his hair looks fine. It looks cutely mussed, if anything. If this were up to Victor he would say that Yuri shouldn’t care about what other people think, especially when this place and these people are the furthest thing from fine dining.

But it doesn’t seem like Yuri cares. He keeps rolling up his sleeves, adjusting the hems the best he can, tucking the bagginess of his shirt into his pants like he’s trying to hide the stains on it. When it doesn’t seem like it does much, Yuri looks to be planning his escape route, about ready to book it out of there if Victor doesn’t do something. And quick.

He shrugs out of his grey cardigan, holding it out over the table, and Yuri looks at him weirdly. “Put this on,” Victor tells him.

“What.”

“Put on the cardigan.”

“I’m definitely not doing that.”

“Why not?” Victor demands. When Yuri doesn’t answer him immediately, Victor nudges it against Yuri’s arm on the table. “It’s soft,” he says enticingly.

He brings the cardigan back down when Yuri doesn’t bite, his arm beginning to tire from holding it out for someone not willing to take it. He would be inclined to forthrightly insist Yuri take it, that neither of them are going anywhere nor eating anything until he does. But Yuri stares him down with eyes that so earnestly say _don’t fight me on this_ , and it makes Victor fall back without another word.

It makes him wonder whether the material of the cloth is soft enough for Yuri. Maybe Yuri has delicate skin.

When the waiter comes over, Victor is feeling the cardigan in his hands beneath the table while distractedly trying to order. It seems Yuri doesn’t fare much better, smoothing his hands over his hair every chance he can get whenever the waiter glances away to write on a notepad. The waiter, who otherwise looks like they might be the talkative type, thankfully seems to not want to bother with the two of them and walks away.

“Well?”

Victor looks up. “Well, what?” He has one hand on his water glass and the other still on the cardigan on his lap underneath the table, ready to be handed over if that’s what Yuri wants after all.

But Yuri only places his chin in his hands, creasing his eyebrows and biting his lip like he’s almost frustrated at Victor’s complete ignorance. That he has to make Yuri say it.

“Your cardigan looks good on you. So keep it on, please.”

Victor is barely processing the statement when the water glass he was sipping from slips from his fingers and spills all over the table, getting the place settings drenched with ice water.

“ _Shit_ ,” Victor swears, his fingers instinctively scrambling for the napkins before they can get too soaked. “Shit, shit. My bad.”

His mind forgets what just happened in favour of immediately mopping up the spills the best he can, telling the passing waiters that everything’s fine and he’s got it and it’s no big deal, this happens all the time. The cold water against his hands help to quell the heat pulsating through him, at least.

 “Wow, I’m surprised the glass didn’t smash to pieces,” Yuri says, laughing, not even helping clean up much save for idly sliding around an already-soaked napkin across the table. “No wonder you don’t go on dates much.”

“…Thanks.”

At least Yuri seems to be amused. Victor might be more offended if he didn’t remember that this was all definitely Yuri’s fault to begin with.

Suddenly, Yuri’s gasping, dropping the soaked napkin on the table in favour of quickly cupping his hands around the waterfall of ice cold water that slowly drips down his side of the table, having dripped right onto his legs. Yuri’s expression turns sour. “Great.”

Victor grabs a fistful of fresh napkins with lightning speed. “I’ve got it.”

Standing on his feet, he reaches over the other side of the table, curving his hand against the underside before any more water can fall on Yuri.

“This… doesn’t happen as often as it seems.” Victor chuckles awkwardly, feeling his own shirt dampen from his stomach pressing against the wet edge of his side of the table.

“Oh, it doesn’t?”

“No. Well... okay, it does. But it could be worse. One time it was red wine.”

Yuri still can’t keep in his laughter like he’s having the time of his life. “Oh, Victor…”

It’s really hard to follow up with another joke when all Victor can think about is keeping his head down and not fucking things up further. Yuri might end up needing that change of clothes, after all. He feels bad. Yuri can't even move with the water dribbling into his palms.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I’m probably cursed,” Victor cuts him off bleakly. “There’s no other explanation. One time I paid for a girl’s dry-cleaning, you know? She said I didn’t have to but I felt bad. She took the time to put on a pretty skirt and all. But I couldn’t bring myself to see her after that. Though, I guess if she asked again I wouldn’t have said no... _Shit_ , I’m doing that thing I hate—I’m talking about other people during a date. Sorry, I’m not normally like this.”

He dials back a bit when he realizes the word that sort of just slipped out. They're only eating out at a restaurant because Yuri's hungry, he's starving, it's practically good will on Victor's part more than anything. But if this is what it is or if this is what Victor is telling himself, there might actually be a fine line between what one _does_ with a person they like and the sorts of things you _do_ with a person you like. The only concern now is at what point does the feeling become mutual?

There’s something warm, a faint pressure, that appears out of nowhere against the top of Victor's head that makes him halt over the table mid-wipe. The water he's drowning his hands in skids right off the edge and onto the floor, possibly hitting the table over. And then the soft pressure from his head is gone within an instant, like Victor had only just imagined it.

It was a pair of lips, his brain translates just a second too late.

 “Uh—m!” he hears Yuri stuttering, reclining back in his seat so fast he hits the back of the booth. “Sorry, I… your head was right there? I couldn’t help myself? I mean I said it wasn’t your fault, okay. So stop looking so mopey.”

Victor chances a glance up, sees Yuri shifting anxiously in his seat like he wants to get up and run away, not seeming to know what to do with his hands still cupped with a puddle of water. He’s looking around, anywhere else, searching for somewhere to dump that’s not just back on the table.

“You really just…?” Victor asks.

“Yes, I did.”

Victor’s hand grips the soggy napkins on the table in a desperate attempt to feel something other than his heartbeat throbbing in his ears, still running manically from knocking over the glasses earlier. Well, Victor actually can’t quite remember if the heart throbbing started there or a little bit earlier.

And Yuri’s face has suddenly become so close, with Victor leaning so far over the table.

There’s a sumptuous clarity in the lips that press together after having touched his head, a wide frenzy in Yuri’s eyes behind his frames that so badly want Victor to say or do something, anything, and Victor can’t understand why Yuri has to keep ramping up the stakes like this. Victor’s head tingles, and he can feel the greed inside himself well up to unparalleled amounts.

Like what would it be like? If Yuri would turn towards him and indulge him just one more time?

“You’re not getting another,” Yuri tells him quietly when Victor finds he’s craned his neck so far forward he nearly falls flat on the table. Yuri stares resolutely to the side, but Victor can tell the sidewalk outside the window is not at all what he’s really focusing on. “You’re _not_ getting another one,” Yuri repeats, strained, just barely above a whisper. And then his expression softens. “…Not today, anyway.”

Victor falls back down in his seat, his legs having totally given out.

Yuri finally looks at him expectantly like he’s making sure Victor’d heard him. And of course, he had. He wants to tell Yuri to just dump the puddle of water in his hands back onto the table.

“Okay,” Victor says instead, and Yuri seems pleased. “You don’t have to make such a cute face, you know.” Though he secretly loves it.

“I was just thinking you don’t have to pay for my dry-cleaning.”

“I don’t?”

“Well, no,” Yuri remarks. “It’s just water. If it was red wine I’d tell you to buy me a whole new set of clothes.”

And Victor finds that when he can’t just whip out his credit card for everything, Yuri really gets off on making him wipe down tables and pick his forgotten sweaters up off the floor.

It doesn’t change the fact that Victor still takes the bill at the end of the night, but he finds it’s not for any particular feeling of obligation to pay or anything. Even if all those other times before hadn’t quite counted as anything in Victor’s mind—times where he’d bought Yuri food and coffee, and paid for the countless opportunities of small talk and studying-but-not-really. Mostly, Victor wants at least tonight, especially tonight, to be counted indisputably as a date. That’s all he really wants.

-

I think I’m in love, Victor says eventually. And it’s like he tosses himself to the wind, uncaring of where he goes from there.

-

“Do you think he would like it?” Victor asks more as a nervous rhetorical question than expecting any real answer.

Chris stands by him in the expensive jewelry store as they peer down through the glass the attendant had pointed out to them. “He’ll probably like anything you give him,” Chris says unhelpfully. “Does he even have standards with this kind of thing?”

“He’s not—you know, he’s not fucking poor, Chris.”

“I mean, even as a romantic gesture,” Chris explains. “I think he’ll be happy with anything as long as it’s coming from you.”

He leans in until his nose nearly touches the glass, but it’s still not as close as Victor’s being. “…You think?” Victor almost squeaks. “You don’t think it’s too shiny? Too flashy for him?”

“If he doesn’t like it, you can always give it to me instead.”

“ _Fine_. I’ll get it. No, not for you. I know Yuri will probably like it,” Victor convinces himself as he hands over his credit card with shaking fingers. “I hope he likes it.”

-

Yuri is already a little tipsy by the time Victor is handing over a pretty gift bag.

“What’s this?” Yuri asks him, sweet and almost too much for Victor to handle.

“Merry Christmas,” Victor answers, perhaps a shade or two redder than even Yuri is. He can feel it. Though, Yuri probably can’t tell anyway in the state he’s in. “Open it up.”

“I can open it right here?”

“Yep.”

Yuri sets aside his wine glass on the counter before taking out the gift wrap, letting it fall to the floor. He must really be in a state if he’s just going to leave the paper out in the middle of their hallway. Of course, Victor’s already known for years what Yuri’s like under the influence.

“Oh, you got me a watch!” Yuri says, marvelling at it in the white satin box in his hands. Even with the slight dip his head makes, his eyes twinkle as he holds it up to the light. “It looks expensive.”

“It wasn’t _that_ expensive.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to—uff.” Yuri comes in to hug him, letting the empty gift bag rustle to the floor, and Victor wraps his arms back in a tight embrace around Yuri, breathing a sigh of relief. He mumbles into Yuri’s hair, “So you don’t have to keep wearing that shitty five dollar one. And you can stop threatening me with trading it away in exchange for food.”

“I don’t do that anymore,” Yuri whines.

Victor laughs, lifting Yuri’s wine glass off the table to take a sip of it. “That’s true.”

Maybe Yuri isn’t the type to be wearing fancy watches, Victor thinks as they lounge on the couch together, Yuri comfortable in his lap, as he hooks the watch onto Yuri’s wrist so they can see what it looks like on him. It kind of clashes with the blue knit Yuri’s wearing.

Well, he can always wear it for special occasions or when he wants to feel high class. Victor doesn’t really care either way. Even if it lays forgotten on Yuri’s desk or in a drawer as just a gift that Victor got him that one time during that one forgettable Christmas of the many Christmases they might spend together. If it makes Yuri feel special, even for just this one moment, that’s all that Victor has ever wanted. An infinite amount of special moments.

When he feels tingly movement against his hand, he looks down to see Yuri, with his wristwatch still on, playing with Victor’s ring finger and slipping a golden ring out of nowhere onto it.

Victor nearly jumps off the couch, his eyes widening impossibly. “Wha—!? What the hell are you doing??”

Yuri finishes sliding the band all the way down to the bottom of Victor’s finger. “Oh, uh… I thought I could just put it on you while you were dozing off.” Yuri takes a sip at his wine, showing off Victor’s hand like it’s a beautiful work of art he’d created. “Tada?” He takes another sip nervously.

Victor rips his hand from Yuri’s grasp, brings it up close to his face to see despite it shaking so badly he can hardly concentrate. It’s… definitely a golden ring band, glinting and reflecting in the fairy lights they have up along the walls behind them, looking well-made and expensive like Yuri had poured all his money into getting it. Victor’s feeling suddenly dizzy, flipping his hand over every which way before the severe heart attack he’s currently experiencing makes him pass out.

“Yuri…” he wheezes, already past the verge of crying and about to go into hysterics. He grips onto Yuri’s knit sweater, burying his face, like he can’t bear to lay eyes on such a thing but he also doesn’t dare look away. “Please explain.”

Yuri looks at him from over his shoulder, a harsh blush against the curve of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose from where his glasses have slipped a little in the commotion. He takes Victor’s hand, his own already donning a matching gold ring—Victor has no idea where or when that appeared, either. The butterflies in his stomach rise up to his throat, nearly choking him, he can’t breathe. Yuri takes his hand so gently but Victor can’t help squeezing him back uncontrollably. All the while Yuri only smiles sheepishly at him.

“Victor Nikiforov, will you…”

And Victor’s lips are already on him, the wine glass in Yuri’s other hand slipping from his grasp to shatter spectacularly against the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> btw happy wednesday!!! oh right i forgot those are over.... one thing i'm still not over about is that interview that said 'katsuki yuri's romantic history is a secret'........ pls? i must know??


End file.
